1974 – Mel Brooks’ western spoof film “Blazing Saddles”, starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder premieres at the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, California; patrons watched from horseback rather than cars
0457 – Leo I crowned Eastern Roman Emperor, 1st to be crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople
1238 – Mongolian forces led by General Batu capture and burn the important Russian city of Vladimir, after an eight-day siege
1301 – Edward of Caernarfon (later Edward II) becomes the first English Prince of Wales
1569 – King Philip II forms Inquisition in South America
1613 – Michail Romanov (aged 16) becomes Tsar of Russia
1783 – Great Siege of Gibraltar, launched by France and Spain against the British colony during the American War of Independence is lifted after 3 years and 7 months
1795 – The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
1839 – Henry Clay declares in Senate “I had rather be right than president”
1845 – The Portland Vase, thought to date to the 1st century BC is shattered into more than 80 pieces by a drunken visitor to the British Museum
1857 – French writer Gustave Flaubert is acquitted on a charge of obscenity for his work “Madame Bovary”
1876 – US President Grant’s private secretary Orville acquitted in Whiskey Ring
1877 – The first Guernsey Cattle Club was organized in New York City.
1882 – The last bareknuckle fight for the heavyweight boxing championship took place in Mississippi City.
1893 – Elisha Gray patented a machine called the telautograph. It automatically signed autographs to documents.
1894 – The Cripple Creek miners’ strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, begins in Cripple Creek, Colorado
1905 – Dominican Republic signs treaty turning over customs collection to US
1913 – The Turks lost 5,000 men in a battle with the Bulgarian army in Gallipoli.
1920 – Russian Imperial Navy Admiral Kolchak, leader of anti-communist “White Movement” executed by Bolshevik firing squad in Irkutsk, Russian SFSR
1936 – The U.S. Vice President’s flag was established by executive order.
1940 – “Pinocchio” world premiered at the Center Theatre in Manhattan.
1943 – The U.S. government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days.
1944 – During World War II, the Germans launched a counteroffensive at Anzio, Italy.
1950 – United States formally recognizes the State of Vietnam as the legitimate government of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as leader
1962 – The U.S. government banned all Cuban imports and re-export of U.S. products to Cuba from other countries.
1962 – Gas explosion in Luisanthal coal mine Voelklingen Germany kills 298
1971 – Switzerland votes for national women’s suffrage in a referendum
1973 – North Ireland’s United Loyalist Council hold a one-day strike, loyalist paramilitaries forcibly try to stop people going to work
1974 – The nation of Grenada gained independence from Britain.
1974 – Mel Brooks’ western spoof film “Blazing Saddles”, starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder premieres at the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, California; patrons watched from horseback rather than cars
1977 – Russia launched Soyuz 24.
1984 – Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart made the first untethered space walk.
1985 – “Sports Illustrated” released its annual swimsuit edition. It was the largest regular edition in the magazine’s history at 218 pages.
1986 – Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled his country ending 28 years of family rule.
1987 – Police in South Korea make hundreds of arrests during protest demonstrations, the country’s biggest for 6 years, after a student died in custody
1991 – The Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected president.
1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed by 12 countries from the European Community (EC) to create the European Union (EU)
1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.
1999 – NASA’s Stardust space probe was launched. The mission was to return comet dust samples from comet Wild 2. The mission was completed on January 15, 2006 when the sample return capsule returned to Earth.
2009 – The Black Saturday bushfires in Australia kill 173 people, The fires were the worst natural disaster in Australian history.
2018 – All citrus fruit can be traced to the southeast foothills of the Himalayas, according to DNA study published in “Nature”
2018 – White House aide Rob Porter resigns in wake of physical abuse allegations by ex-wives
2019 – Measles cases in Europe highest in a decade, tripling in a year to 82,596 according to WHO
2019 – Measles outbreak declared in the Philippines with 1,813 cases and 26 deaths
2019 – Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio declares national emergency over rape and sexual assault violence after instances double
2022 – European security facing its most dangerous moment since the Cold War, amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to EU foreign policy chief
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
